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Hi Everyone,
I think that this week I shall tell stories of life on the farm—and they all happened last week.
Making Order out of Chaos
A few months back a big wind storm came through and toppled one of the arbors in the garden. That arbor was supporting a muscadine grape vine on one side and an Alachua rose on the other side. The grapevine side fell over on the rose side and made the walkway impassible. When I got to the Cottage garden last week I decided to start weeding the flower beds around the gazebo and I worked on cleaning up some of the walkways. As I worked my way around the bed I turned the corner to where the arbor had collapsed. I looked at the heap of wood and vines and wasn’t happy about the state of the rose. I wanted to tear the arbor all apart and rescue the rose. The wood was very rotten—and therefore was pretty light. I thought that it would be easy to pick up all the loose wood, but I found out that the “roof” of the arbor was on top of everything and because the grapevine was woven all through the metal panel (the roof) I couldn’t pick it up—so I abandoned my idea. A little later Steve and Mom arrived in the garden and Steve was in charge of cleaning up the walkways. As soon as he got to the walkway where the arbor was collapsed he asked, “Can’t we clean this up?” I was excited and eagerly jumped in to help. The first thing we did was to pull that metal panel off of the stack and pull the grapevines off. Then we could easily get to all the wood. The trellis that was supporting the grapevine was slightly still in tack—and I do mean slightly. It held together just enough that we could stand it up and put three t-posts in the ground and tie the trellis to the t-posts using hay string. We think it will hold—at least for now. We then took the metal panel and attached it to two t-posts in front of the rose and then I used some hay string to tie the rose up. Steve was then able to clean up the walkways and the entrance looked much better. Steve said he couldn’t understand how come we hadn’t cleaned up the arbor before then. I think that finding the time had a lot to do with it.
Honey is NOT a Sweetie Pie!
Tuesday afternoon we were packaging eggs when Papa came in and told us that a cow was in labor. A little while later Mom and Papa disappeared down to check on the cow. Honey was due to calve April 5, but like most of our cows she was overdue. The little calf came six days late and I was rooting for a girl. Sometimes a name pops in my head and I just got to name the next calf born. This time I wanted to name a calf Buttercup, and since Honey and “butter” go good together, and since Honey’s Grandmother was Buttercup I thought that Honey would be a good candidate to name her calf Buttercup. When the petite little light brown calf with white markings was born Papa went over to see if it was a boy or a girl—BUT Honey was not about to let him get anywhere near her calf. She kept pushing Papa away with her head and hitting on him until for safety reasons Papa had to give up. When we were done packaging the eggs Steve and I had to go to the garden to harvest some lettuce and collards. Mom told me us to not go near Honey for she was not being too sweet. Of course Steve and I had a good laugh and said, “But, we want to go see if she had a boy or a girl!” Steve laughingly told me that he would sidetrack Honey while I ran over to the calf to see what it was. We drove out to the garden, and the cows were in the field beside the garden. We walked over to the fence and watched from a distance as Honey glared at us. Then we watched as she gave the other cows and a calf the one-two when they got to close to her baby. We decided that it would be safest to go harvest in the garden.
I found a little surprise the next morning when I got to the milking parlor to start milking. The newest little calf was curled up in one of my milking stalls—and Honey was on the other side of the hotwire. That meant that I could pet that calf to my heart’s content—and find out whether it was a girl or a boy. First off though I ran for my camera and told Steve that he had to come and see. We had a drum roll and then I lifted the back leg and found a little miniature udder! She was a little girl and I could call her Buttercup! Once I got my share of calf loving, Buttercup got up and pranced around in the parlor before her mother started to demand she come back. You can meet Honey and her calf Buttercup in our newest video here: Buttercup your mama's calling you!
A2 Milk Cows
When A2 genetics started to be the “buzz” word when talking about milk cows we really didn’t know what to think about it. We had seen more difference in whether or not the cow was grain-fed or grass-fed than whether it was A2 or A1. We thought that it might be a passing fad and really didn’t care to get mixed up in it. That was until we had a family who wanted to buy a milk cow that was A2. Since our cows had never been tested, they decided that they would pay for the testing of six of our cows plus the bull and then they would have a variety to choose from. The test is real simple—you just pull out about 30 tail hairs and mail them off to a lab in California (with your money too). When the results came back the bull was A2 and either all 6 cows were or all but one was A2. That sparked our interest—so we tested the whole herd. Our results came back that more than 75% of our herd was A2. We could truly say, “This is the LORD'S doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23) As the years went by, those number of A2 cows increased and the number of A1 cows decreased. We were down to just two A1 cows left in our herd: Penelope and Amy. Amy is our oldest cow—18 years old this year and ready for retirement after her next calf because only half of her udder works. Penelope may become a nurse cow when she calves in a few weeks. Then the calves born to an A2 mama cow who was bred to an A2 bull will be born A2—but truth be told there are two genes so every parent carries either an A2/A2 or an A2/A1 (I do not know if there is an A1/A1). When a baby is formed each parent gives one gene to the new calf. Therefore a parent with A2/A1 genes could pass an A2 gene on and if the other parent is A2/A2 they would automatically pass on an A2. This would make the calf A2/A2.We had three heifers on the farm from Penelope and Amy and a few weeks ago we finally got around to getting them tested. Amy’s two calves (Mya and Noel) came back as A1/A2, but Penelope’s calf Paisley came back with A2/A2. Mya had passed the stage of a heifer and was a full grown milk cow that we were milking. We decided that since many of our customers are pushing more and more for A2 milk that we would go ahead and sell Mya and Noel—at least we get to keep Paisley for she has personality. We hated to sell Mya because she is a very sweet, gentle cow who gives lots of milk—but we have a list of people looking for milk cows and so we made a few calls and one of the families was very eager to get a cow in milk (those are like rubies—very rare to find). When they came up to check out Mya, they also decided to buy a bull—you cannot keep a cow in milk unless she keeps having babies. I was glad that Patriot (America’s first calf) finally gets to go and be a breeding bull. So on Thursday Mom and Papa drove south to deliver Mya and Patriot to their new home—I had to stay home and nurse a crazy sore throat (that I thankfully got over pretty quickly). Then on Saturday another family who is looking for their first cow came to look at Noel—and they are very excited about her. So the countdown has begun—we are really only months away from having a 100% A2/A2 herd of Jersey milk cows.
Selling like Hotcakes!
It never pays to sell out of an item—because when you get it back in stock it sells out pretty fast. This happened to us with chickens back in 2020, and it happened again this spring. Thankfully it only takes eight weeks to grow a chicken from hatching to the freezer. I was taking pre-orders for the batch of chickens that we processed on Friday and I just kept writing down what people wanted. Then last Thursday I organized that list and realized that I really needed 70 chickens—which is how many we order and usually a few die. The batch before we lost half the batch so that really didn’t help to supply the demand. Friday morning Papa and Mom headed out at 6:30 to collect the chickens and when they came in I asked Mom how many chickens did we have and she said 67. That meant I could fill the pre-orders but wouldn’t have any left over to supply anybody else—but the good news is that we have another 70 to do in two weeks, and another 70 two weeks after that and so on for the rest of the year. I wonder if it will be enough this year—will we have to expand again?
Fast Food for Dinner!
I have heard that farmers can be known to eat the worst foods. That is because they are so busy that they do not have time to cook decent meals. Here on the farm we totally understand, and sometimes we have to rely on fast food—but not the kind you find at the local drive-thru restaurants. Fast food around here consists of foods that we spent hours and days preparing in the past and now it can be found frozen in the freezer or canned on the pantry shelves. After processing chickens all day Friday I was a little exhausted and I had forgotten to get any meat out for dinner. We have salmon fillets in the freezer—and they thaw real fast. I also grabbed a bag of frozen spaghetti squash and a bag of frozen okra—both veggies that we had grown in the garden and preserved the harvest by freezing them. The meal was done in 30 minutes. Then Saturday we were swamped with customers and I had to help wash up the milking equipment because our helper Penny had to take care of her mother who is very ill. I had one goal for the day though—harvest the potatoes. We bought a few boxes of potatoes back in December in order to can them—but we only managed to get a box and a half canned. The other half began to sprout so we decided to use them for seed potatoes and we planted them in January in the garden tunnels (we didn’t have to worry about the freezes with them under cover). Steve and I planted 84 potatoes, and Saturday afternoon Mom and I worked to harvest half of them and we got two bushels—more than what we planted and more than what we had even bought to can. It was 6:00 by the time we made it back to the house and while I had taken meat out for dinner it was too late to cook short ribs. I needed a meal that would be done by 6:30—but I racked my brain and Mom racked hers. I was so tired that I really just wanted French toast and eggs, but Mom has been having trouble with her blood sugar of late so I was trying hard to steer away from anything that would affect her sugars. It took me until 6:20 to figure out what to fix, and this time canned food came to the rescue and dinner was done in 20 minutes. I grabbed a can of salmon and made salmon cakes. Then I heated up a jar of potatoes (we can our potatoes for long term storage), a jar of field peas (we buy them in bulk and can them), and a jar of green beans (we grew them last fall and harvested and canned them up in December). I was tickled pink to have been able to serve my family a nice hot meal of meat and vegetables that required very little time and energy.
Now speaking of time and energy—it is 10:22 because I had a late start to my journal because my sister came over to visit with her two children and my niece Makenna and I went out to do the evening chores together. Papa is going to bed, Mom wants to and so do I but this journal must be proof read and sent. So until next week—good night!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare